Stanford Wins Desert Race by a Microchip

Stanford University's robot racing team Sunday was declared the winner of $2 million in the Defense Department's Grand Challenge race to develop an autonomous vehicle that could become a model for battlefield robots. The team's technology-laden robotic vehicle, a converted Volkswagen sport utility vehicle named Stanley, navigated a 131-mile course in the southern Nevada desert in 6 hours, 53 minutes and 58 seconds, beating the second-place finisher, Carnegie Mellon University's Sandstorm Humvee, by about 11 minutes. The race was Saturday, but a winner was not declared until Sunday, after race judges computed the results. "This was absolutely incredible," said Anthony Tether, head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which sponsored the race. Tether presented a giant facsimile of a check to the blue-shirted Stanford team, which cheered and poured champagne over one another.